Helping your kids adjust to moving house

Focusing on the positive with children when you’re moving house is understandable and necessary.

Say for instance: “You’ll have a bedroom of your own and a bigger garden to play in.”

But it’s also important to acknowledge just how much they’re going to miss the old house.

So says child therapist and parent child coach Helen Sholdice, who points out that the family home represents inner security for a child — this is an emotional reality, not just a physical one.

“Moving house is a very significant change in a child’s circumstances more than just a change in their environment.

“The child structures his life around his familiar home environment and if this changes it disrupts their internal map, how they orient themselves — the sense that every day things are where they expect them to be.”

From a parent’s perspective, a move is generally a positive, desirable thing and they can often be astonished at their child’s level of upset, that for them the move initially feels more like a loss than a gain.

“Children are a bit conservative. They like things the way they are. They wonder ‘why are you doing this?’”

Empathising with your child is the first step in helping them transition.

“The simple fact of acknowledging that the child is going to miss their home eases feelings. Saying ‘of course you’ll miss your room, your neighbourhood, your friends’ shows the child that the parent is thinking of them and, when children feel thought about, they relax.”

At least three weeks before the move, bring the child to visit the new house so they have a picture in their mind of where they’re going to be, of their room, the garden, the street.

“Give them a sense of ownership, of being consulted. Ask them where in their room they’d like their bed to be, what colours they’d like to paint the room.”

On the morning of the move, she recommends taking the child’s pillow and sheets from the bed and using these to make up his bed in the new house.

“When the child puts his head down on that pillow, it will smell familiar. Smell is so evocative so the child has the feeling that not everything has changed.”